When reviewing and analyzing imagery, it can often be advantageous to locate the horizon within the given image. This is because an image observer may only be interested in what is below (or above) the horizon. For example, for an image of the ocean containing a plurality of ships, if an analyst is only interested in observing the ships, the observer is not interested in searching for any contact above the horizon (in the sky). On the other hand, if the contacts of interest are airborne, the analyst is not interested in the portion of the image that is below the horizon.
Real-time horizon detection in full-motion videos can be an even more important capability that can aid and can facilitate real-time processing of full motion videos, for purposes such as object detection, recognition and other video/image segmentation purposes. A horizon detection system can be used to speed up processing time per frame of a video by ignoring parts of the videos that are not relevant to the object detection. For example, a ground vehicle detection and tracking system can greatly reduce system processing time by ignoring parts of the image that contains sky. This can also lead to a decrease in false detects in the underlying anomaly detection process of this system.
In view of the above, it is an object of the present invention to provide systems and methods for real-time horizon detection in imagery that can identify the horizon from frames, irrespective of the angle at which the horizon appears in the frame and irrespective of the presence or absence of objects occluding the horizon line in the image frame. Another object of the present invention to provide systems and methods for real-time horizon detection in imagery that can locate the image horizon without losing the objects that are close to the horizon line. Yet another object of the present invention to provide systems and methods for real-time horizon detection in imagery that can be used as a front-end processing unit for video imagery, for a larger marine object detection system. Still another object of the present invention to provide systems and methods for real-time horizon detection in imagery that can improve the object detection and processing speed of Maritime Domain Awareness (MDA) system by ignoring parts of the image where an object will not be found, e.g. a ship above the horizon (in the sky). Still another object of the present invention to provide systems and methods for real-time horizon detection that can minimize the possibility of false maritime detections from the sky region. Another object of the present invention to provide systems and methods for real-time horizon detection that are easy to use in a cost-efficient manner.